About Me

My name is Nicholas Helish but my online handle everywhere is YawLighthouse(hence the name of this website).

I’m a gameplay engineer that has been working in the video game industry for the past 10+ years.

I was born in South Florida and raised in Central Florida(Orlando area). I went to school at Orlando Tech and Mid-Florida Technical College, both located in Orlando, Florida finished my schooling in 2016. Then I started doing military, medical, and rollercoaster simulation work as a contractor before I started working full-time in the games industry. Since then I’ve been making games and loving it!

I love working as a gameplay engineer because I get to work in the game engine and collaborate with designers and artists to bring the game life!

I primarily worked in Unreal Engine due to the large amount of AAA games using it and I enjoy the development process working in the engine because of its tooling suite.

Why did you want to make games? I’m glad you asked!

Really it was Batman Arkham City, I played that game A LOT (400+ hours on my original Xbox account before I got banned for hacking my gamerscore). It was the culmination of the story, gameplay, score, aesthetic, story themes, and the ending that made teenage Nick say “I want to make that”, so far only one other game has hit me that same/similar way since then(Red Dead Redemption 2). But a game that informed me about game design and finding the fun was actually Spider-Man 2 on the original Xbox.